Renessa

I could tell by her dress that she had been to Monte Carlo before. A cacophony of silk-
charmeuse rivulets ran down her dryad body like vines sprouting from her sharp, focused collar-
bone. It was the kind of bone that had definitely been to Monte Carlo before.

All of the eyes in the room followed her, not that she cared. The alien stares passed
entirely through her, below the plane of her unblunted focus, as if she were invisible. Invisible? She was anything but that, and mostly just thin. As she approached, her sinewy figure grew
larger. I grew increasingly aware of just how vacant the adjacent seat was.

She didn’t have the kind of mouth that didn’t need a drink. I hoped the words would
billow out like weighty cigar vapor, settling into the impossible depths of her ears. Instead,
despite myself, “dyawanna draank?” spewed forth with the percussive “splat” of a stuck glob of
artisan tooth-polish.

I barely remember her ever saying a word. It was only after Flavio brought her third
vodka neat that I’d realized we had been talking for an hour and a half, and that I, in lieu of my
best intentions, was madly in love. I’d also realized that I hadn’t once asked for her name.

She teased me. “You want to know my name?”

She took out the single ice cube from her drink and slowly poured the remainders of the
cold poison down her neck. The vodka streamed down her cleavage and settled at the pointed
nodes of her fuck-you-breasts.

“Let’s just say,” she sang, alcohol dripping from her nipples and chin, “that I’ve been to
Monte Carlo before.”

She twirled away, peppering individual pearls on all of the game tables within reach,
whispering: